This episode is really going to be a problem for me to talk about.
The episodes that have been the simplest and most entertaining to review are the bad ones.
But being pretty new to this process,
when I deeply love an episode as I do
'Becoming (Part 2)',
easily in my Top Five for the series,
I end up sounding effusive or redundant.
Oh this scene's great.
Oh This scene is GREAT.
Oh my God, her performance in this scene is so great.
'Becoming (Part 2)' is a Whedon episode and it is a masterpiece front to back.
The show has become comfortable enough that it can play with its own rules and structure
and the results are so much fun to watch.
And then they're soul destroying.
Let's get into this one.
It's great.
DAMN IT!
['Collapsing Time']
*Becoming (Part 2)
Occasionally, Buffy’s powers seems to lapse for the convenience of the story.
As in a cop being able to shove an impassioned Buffy towards the door.
Snyder shows up and tells the cops Buffy is behind whatever happened.
"You stupid little troll. You have no idea!"
She breaks free,
escapes
shows up in the hospital in an outfit utterly conspicious for how hard it is trying to be inconspicuous.
Xander finds her and brings her to a coma’d Willow.
There’s a nice little exchange here between Xander and Cordelia.
It's the most genuine affection I can remember them sharing.
And Cordelia’s self labeling herself "cowardly" and seeming to CARE about it is another subtle but significant highlight of her true character.
Giles is with Angelus at the mansion.
Angelus’ threat to torture Giles is so depraved and perverse.
His mannerisms and intimate disclosure of his terrible desires almost make him sound horny at the opportunity to inflict pain.
I love it.
It's a tense and frightning performance that is hard to look away from.
I’m not sure where this Angelus has been the whole season
but he’s working at another level of evil with Joss Whedon feeding him lines.
Buffy’s mom is being interviewed by the cops from 'Ted',
who were there when Buffy knocked over John Ritter.
[Come and knock on our---]
Buffy goes to see Giles and stumbles on Whistler.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this."
"Nobody saw you coming.”
Wait what?
Because in the last episode you were just pushing Angel to go see Buffy.
“Then you two made with the smoochies"
"...now he’s a creep again.”
Okay.
So implying that you KNEW about the curse and didn’t expect
a broody lone vampire who has been hard up for 70 years
not to get with an underage...
Oh.
Oh okay, I guess...
I guess that makes sense.
Perhaps this scene is the closest the writers come to acknowledging the
slightly statutory
side of Angel and Buffy’s relationship.
That and the parallels between James’ relationship with his teacher in 'I Only Have Eyes for You'.
So if he was sent down... isn’t he technically an angel then?
Other than using it as the name of one of the most significant characters,
'Buffy' always seems to shy away from being too biblical with how its universe works.
This is one of the RARE times it feels a bit awkwardly handled to me.
I can think of one more off the top of my head.
Buffy storms off and runs into another cop.
"Oh."
"Hello, cutie."
THIS is the Spike.
This is the game changingly hilarious, feels good to be bad Spike we all love.
And really, this is the first glimpse of the Spike we’ll see the rest of the series.
He isn’t brooding about some scheme
or how he’s going to end the Slayer.
He proposes to Buffy a deal.
He’ll help her kill Angel so he can get his girlfriend back.
"I want to save the world."
"We like to talk big, ...vampires do."
"'I'm going to destroy the world.'"
"It's just tough guy talk."
Well, except for certain vampires then.
As I mentioned in 'Innocence',
I think that Spike’s words here highlight a discrepancy between vampire personalities that lacks a clear explanation.
Assuming equal evilness for the demons that takeover a sired,
what then explains the dramatic difference between say
the hedonist,
and the psychopathic sadist?
My thoughts on that are in the 'Innocence' review.
"All right. Talk."
“I'm just gonna kill this guy.”
[clears throat loudly]
"Oh, right."
Oh man.
THIS.
THIS is the show I love.
At Willow’s bedside, Xander seems to have a moment of realization when it comes to Willow.
"I love you."
Xander’s confession brings Willow back
and she calls for Oz to come to her side.
Joyce finds Buffy and Spike wandering the neighborhood.
"Buffy, terrible things have happened."
"What were you doing?"
"What, you're mum doesn't know?"
This episode just feels like Whedon is getting to play
and it’s one of the things that makes the series so special.
In another show, this moment would only ever occur as fan fiction.
But in 'Buffy', now that the rules of the universe have been so firmly established the creator of the series figures
"What if we take one of the Big Bads and have him sit in the living room with Buffy’s mom making awkward conversation about how she once hit him in the head with an axe?"
"Sure why not."
And all of that occurs against the backdrop of a sickening torture sequence where Buffy’s father figure is being tortured by her ex-boyfriend.
None of this should work,
and yet it is a virtuoso performance.
"...I'm a Vampire Slayer."
Remember too the mirror theme I mentioned in 'School Hard'?
Buffy and Spike’s fates have roughly coincided this entire season.
In 'What’s My Line', Spike is badly injured
and loses Drusilla to Angelus.
Shortly after, Buffy loses Angel to Angelus as well.
As Spike is stuck in a wheelchair,
Buffy is unable to do what is necessary to destroy Angelus.
As Buffy goes through the process of preparing to do what must be done
Spike begins to heal.
And now here they are.
Allied at the end of the season and ready for the final battle.
Buffy tells everyone the plan is to hit the mansion at daybreak.
And tells Spike if Giles dies, Drusilla dies as well.
Joyce gets all Joyce-y about this newfound information...
"I-I mean have you tried NOT being a Slayer."
and Buffy reveals a similar darker side about Slayer life that kind of reminded me a bit of her plea in 'Prophecy Girl'.
"I would love to be upstairs, watching TV or gossiping about boys or..."
"...God, even studying!
"But I have to save the world"
"...again!"
It’s a powerful monologue and remember too that the Slayer role is the show's metaphor for adulthood.
Everything Buffy just said could relate similarly to just becoming an adult.
The loss of childhood innocence and the burden of responsibility is in its own way...tragic.
“No. This is insane."
"Buffy, you need help.”
“I’m not crazy!”
I love the small reference to Joyce wanting to qualify this as insanity
...and how she might have handled this information in the past.
Joyce tells Buffy don’t come back.
Perhaps, just a tactic that she thought would prevent her from leaving rather than an actual ultimatum.
But still a demonstration of the Joyce MacGuffin in its total lack of empathy.
Angel is still torturing Giles but Giles refuses to break and even taunts him.
Spike talks Angel out of using a chainsaw and calls Drusilla over.
The universe building continues as Buffy is confronted by Snyder in the library who expels her.
“You know I didn’t do it."
"The police will figure it out.”
"In case you haven't noticed, the police of Sunnydale are DEEPLY stupid."
Giles sits, emotionally depleted.
Barred behind the door of some safe place in his mind to prevent him from succumbing to the pain or revealing anything to Angel.
Drusilla searches the corridors for a way in and finds...
"Jenny!"
Ordinarily so stoic, we can see Giles’ grief in the form of weight lifted as he sees Jenny.
He tells Jenny everything.
Whistler tells Buffy that if the gate to hell opens the only thing that can close it again is Angel’s blood.
"I can deal."
"I got nothing left to lose."
"Wrong, kid."
"You got one more thing."
Xander finds Buffy and Buffy tells him to get Giles and get out.
"Willow. Uh,...she told me to tell you..."
"Tell me what?"
"Kick his ass."
This is the Lie, a source of much contention.
I spent some time googling around fan sites and reading various takes from people on this scene
and it’s shocking how much this scene is still being debated.
You can probably conclude my reaction to the Lie already so I’m not going to dwell on it.
Simply,
Willow has made her own decision that she wants to try the spell again.
She has asked Xander to tell Buffy.
Buffy trusts Xander and always expects the truth from him, especially given information that might affect
her tactics in battle.
And Xander decides that he knows better than either of them.
Nobody knew how the battle would play out and Xander’s decision actually limited Buffy’s options.
Whatever his motivations for that decision, that is very simply wrong.
He cannot elect himself commander.
Buffy attacks.
Xander gets Giles out.
Spike chokes out Drusilla,
another odd contradiction to the “No breath, no heartbeat” part of vampires.
Angel pulls the sword free of Acathla.
He and Buffy duel.
As Willow chants the words of the curse we see the spell suddenly begin to flow through her,
"Is this a good thing?"
"Nici mort, nici al fiintei..."
"Hey, speak English!"
"--care-i va transporta,--"
The door is now open.
"No hope."
"Take all that away..."
"...and what's left?"
[sword plunge]
[catch]
"Me."
"Oof."
"Alright."
Buffy battles Angelus back to Acathla,
she disarms him.
Knocks him to the ground.
And then…
"Buffy?"
This is the moment the ENTIRE season has lead to…
Buffy has been torn all season between
her consuming relationship with Angel
and her path to adulthood as the Slayer.
"A little responsibility is all I ask."
“But as the Slayer..."
"....you don’t have the luxury of being a slave to your-your passions.”
I don’t think the show is saying that we can’t have love and be adults.
Rather that adult love doesn’t require us to be someone other than who we are.
Adult love allows us to maintain our authenticity and integrity.
Our choices define us,
... and when we act as though we don't have any, our lives become meaningless.
"Angel, when I look into the future..."
"...all I see is you."
In 'Halloween', each character was consumed by a specific trait.
But Giles retained his ability to choose and it was he who saved the day.
In 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", Xander cast a love spell
that removed the freedom of choice from every woman in Sunnydale.
“I know it’s not love!"
"It’s obsession!”
"Selfish, banal obsession!"
Consider Whistler’s warning in Giles' apartment when Buffy said she had nothing more to lose.
“Wrong, kid."
"You’ve got one more thing.”
Certainly he could have meant her life
but I think the statement foreshadows the final goodbye between Angel and Buffy
when she is faced with an impossible choice:
to be the Slayer
or lose herself completely.
He is imploring her to act authentically, as her true self.
As Buffy once implored Ford in 'Lie to Me'.
“You have a choice!"
"You don’t have a good choice but you HAVE a choice."
While some of this is the result of Buffy and Angel’s actions,
much of it is simply an indifferent universe.
Buffy didn’t make Angel a vampire.
She never asked to be the Slayer.
She never wanted that responsibility.
That is life.
Or, to put it another way.
“Here's the thing."
"There's moments in your life that make you, that set the course of who you're gonna be."
"Sometimes they're little, subtle moments."
"Sometimes they're not."
"Bottom line is, even if you see 'em comin', you're not ready for the big moments."
"No one asks for their life to change, not really."
"But it does."
"So, what are we, helpless?"
"Puppets?"
"Nah."
"The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that."
"It's what you do afterwards that counts."
"That's when you find out who you are.”
["When the Lights Came On" ]